Unexplained Wealth Orders

Home Office

Estimated Completion, October 2016

An Unexplained Wealth Order (UWO) power would be used to help freeze the assets of individuals who are reasonably suspected to have been enriched by criminal activity, including corruption. If the individual is unable to refuse to explain the source of the suspicious wealth, this can be used as evidence to help law enforcement seize assets through an existing civil recovery process.

Unexplained Wealth Orders

May 5, 2017

THE PROBLEM

Corrupt people cannot steal public funds unless they have a safe place to hide them. There is growing evidence that the UK has become a safe haven for corrupt individuals and their assets. In March 2017 we identified London properties worth a total of £4.2 billion that were bought by individuals with suspicious wealth.

Currently, UK law enforcement has limited power to seize corrupt assets. At present, little can be done to act on highly suspicious wealth unless there is a legal conviction in the country of origin. In cases where the origin country is in crisis or the individual holds power within a corrupt government, this can take decades to obtain or is unlikely to be achieved at all, producing a mere trickle of results against a torrent of corrupt illicit funds.

Since 2015 Transparency International UK has been advocating for the introduction of Unexplained Wealth Order (UWO) powers, an investigative tool that helps law enforcement act on suspicious wealth.

Suspects issued with a UWO would be required to explain legitimate and legal sources of wealth for suspicious UK assets or transactions, provided there is enough initial suspicion of criminality. An inadequate response to a UWO – or no response whatsoever – together with the initial grounds for suspicion, could then be grounds to kick-start a civil recovery process against the assets in question.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE?

The UK passed Unexplained Wealth Orders into law on 27 April 2017, and issued the first of these orders in February 2018. TI-UK is now calling for UWOs to be used on the £4.4 billion worth of UK property bought with suspicious wealth identified in our 2017 report, Faulty Towers.

In October 2018 the identity of the first Unexplained Wealth Order respondent was revealed. More information about this first case is available here.

UNEXPLAINED WEALTH ORDERS: A BRIEF GUIDE

June 7, 2017

Rachel Davies, Transparency International UK’s Head of Advocacy, tells you everything you need to know about Unexplained Wealth Orders. Why are they needed? How do they work? What was Transparency International’s role in bringing them to law? And what is next? Read a brief guide to Unexplained Wealth Orders here: http://www.transparency.org.uk/unexplained-wealth-orders-a-brief-guide/